I am absolutely delighted to report that The first of our monthly Dundee Connections networking meetings was a rip roaring success! With over 40 businesses represented in the room there was a fantastic mixture of existing and new connections and I’m sure everyone who attended started on the path of building business relationships that will last!

Weavers Mill are our venue and I’m sure everyone would like to thank Linda for all her hard work as I’m sure a crowd of 40 plus teas, coffees and brekkie rolls were an unexpected addition to her Thursday morning! We’ll have to give her more warning next time!

Dundee Connections will be a monthly event held on the second Thursday of every month, (so pencil the dates in the diary so you don’t miss out) Our next one is booked for 8th February and tickets are available on eventbrite now.

The reason we ask you to register is in part so that we can get a good idea of numbers and also so that we can prepare a delegate list prior to the event so that all attendees can look out for contacts that they need to meet and use the time we have effectively! You are welcome to come along without registering but we cant promote you if we don’t know you’re going to be there!

On all other days we are free for a chinwag over a cup of tea so feel free to get in touch at contactus@themarketinggeeks.co.uk and we can arrange a suitable time, we look forward to catching up with you all!

Over the years I have had some pretty interesting jobs and got to work with tremendous people. People who I would never have been able to come into contact with had it not been for some obscure demand from a client or some desperate to impress the boss, new graduate who thought up the wackiest idea ever to get attention.

Usually managed to get the wrong sort of attention as wacky ideas tend to be a logistical nightmare. Just saying!

Anyhoo, the other day I was asked what my favourite job was? The asker probably assuming I would say that working for Nintendo and all their cool games was my fav, or perhaps running events with Alcohol brands?

Nope. These were cool jobs and I learned a lot and had a crazy amount of fun, but my favourite stands alone!

I remember the phone-call…

Hi, Clare, we’ve had a last minute cancellation and wondered if you could step in?

Sure, what’s it for?

It’s for blood donation. (a subject I happen to feel passionate about, so they had me!)

Cool, I’ll do it. Send over the details.

I was dressed as a blood drop. It wasn’t glamourous. But it was incredible fun. I was there to have my photograph taken with delegates of a blood technology conference. So not blood donation at all.

The opening evening had a ceilidh, I was the main attraction and danced about as a crazy blood-drop. The following days I turned up and people came over to get their pictures taken with me. My minder took me around the conference and got to have pictures with scientists and developers and engineers.

At the end of the conference week I got a thank you card from the team and we took pictures of us all together. (I’m in red at the back)

That one idea, which was quite a simple one, turned a run-of-the-mill meeting of scientists at seminars into a memorable and enjoyable few days. It also made Roche stand out amongst the crowds of other exhibitors as everyone knew they were there and where to find them. Clever huh!

So next time you are planning an event or a seminar or even a meeting, think about how you can make it memorable and engaging. Be approachable and people will come to you and feel their time is appreciated. It doesn’t need to be a costume character, take photos as you go around, thank the attendees for coming, put on a speaker, ask for opinions. Make it your own and people will come back!

Just a selection of the technologies that were there to present

Over the past few weeks I have been chatting to a lot of customers and I felt my ideas weren’t as “outside of the box” as they usually are, this could be for a number of reasons, because I’ve been working with similar industries, because the people I work with know each other and have wanted to discover similar avenues, because of collaborations or perhaps because we are coming to that time of the year that can be restricting!

Whatever the reason I needed to give myself a kick up the jacksie.

Now, I network a LOT, so being in a room of strangers doesn’t bother me, neither does being with professionals from other industries, in fact, I rather prefer a mixed bag these days.

So, I had to go further….

I had to put myself in a room with people I didn’t know, who discussed something I knew NOTHING about.

So, I went along to the bi-annual Edinburgh Cancer Immunology Seminar to see if I could find collaboration ideas or business development avenues for clients

Challenge accepted

About three minutes into the opening presentation, the words “we all have masters or PhDs” were mentioned and I immediately regretted sitting in the second row of the auditorium. (I never went to Uni and I think I only went to fresher’s fairs when I worked in promo).

I felt dumb.

BUT the first section was on collaborations and while everyone in the room could understand the science, I was more interested in the routes to market, the processes that they took (spoiler alert, much lengthier and drawn out processes than were necessary), the costings and how they accessed the help they needed.

Unfortunately, what they discovered was the same as what many small businesses discover; that there is an awful lot more to business than your own passion for your subject.

Over the course of the day I learnt about collaborations that were going on, research and its intricacies, the challenges to be the first to develop technologies, the accessibility and barriers to collaborative efforts and the lengthy projects on which academics can sometimes base their entire careers.

As someone who moves around as much as me, that’s completely alien!

I had some incredibly interesting conversations, mostly with me asking dumb questions and them being delighted to tell me all about what they were working on! It really got the old noggin ticking!

The conversations were broken down for me so that I could understand the science and when I told them about my work, I broke it down as well, so it really made clear how to communicate things in their most simplistic ways without being patronising or assuming.

Which I think we are all guilty of to some degree.

So yes! I thoroughly recommend taking yourself out of your comfort zone and trying something completely new, be it a hobby or a seminar on something you know nothing about! It will really get you thinking and could generate some fantastic inspiration!

This blog was originally written on Clare’s website so dates are from that, the photo above is a portion of the attendees but many had to run for trains or were slow coaches in leaving the pub (ha, you know the ones) so it’s not everyone that was there.

Last Friday was phenomenal.

This year I was lucky enough to be invited along to join a networking group that was just starting out. The story behind it was a mutual friend of the founder had started a similar group in Glasgow and wanted to replicate their groups success.

It was only on Friday that we discovered the full scale of that success.

It’s easy to think that networking groups fleet in and out and you join to do business, but increasingly it’s that human connection that is really craved. Working alone I know I need to be around people.

We are still very new and we had commented in our own group that in the 6 months since its inception that we thought it was going incredibly well, that we were pretty close, and were probably more open about our challenges with each other than we were with friends and colleagues.

And we are right. We are.

So to sit with this other group, who are essentially the reason we are together, was incredible.

This group started off exactly as we have, and 14 years later the bonds are incredible. These are people who came together to network for (essentially) business purposes and have been together through thick and thin. Literally describing the group as having seen them through some incredibly dark times where the only day they could guarantee being uplifted was the day they met to network.

I felt myself well up at that comment.

Did they always talk about business? No.

Probably rarely did.

The got to know each other. They acted as each other’s mentors, without ever officially adopting that role. They were confidants when times got tough and knew they had that strength to help them when they needed to draw from it.

They are best friends, how beautiful is that!!

Jings we have a lot to live up to.

It was once mentioned that members had said that this group was the highlight of their week, I feel like that. I never want to miss it.

I’m also a little bit scared that someone will start sitting in my favourite chair.

So I get there early.

I truly hope that I’m reporting back in 14 years that we are still going strong, and as cheesy as it sounds, I think we will be.